


Our Hearts on Fire

by Sororising



Series: NatSharon week 2016 [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Asexual Character, Body Dysphoria, Bodyswap, Fluff and Angst, Multi, NatSharon Week 2016, Polyamory, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), So many emotions, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 01:23:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8557183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sororising/pseuds/Sororising
Summary: “A trans woman and an asexual woman body-swapped by a magical artefact,” Sharon says grandly. “They should do a TV show on us.”“I'm not sure the world is ready for that just yet,” Natasha says, in that dryly amused tone that means she's not feeling on edge anymore – or not as much, at least, and Sharon's in a mood to take comfort in small victories.She frowns when she thinks about Natasha’s comment. “They've had weirder. Have you ever seen Doctor Who?”Natasha laughs, and Sharon tries to ignore just how happy it makes her that she was the one causing that laughter. “I didn't mean that,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I meant I doubt they're ready to air a sci-fi show with trans or ace stars.”Oh. That - is probably true. How annoying.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to upload my NatSharon fics in prompt order, but I have writer's block on fics 2, 3, 4 and 5. And I really loved the idea I had when I saw this day 6 prompt (bodyswap), and ended up writing this, which turned out to be one of my favourites out of my fics. I hope you enjoy it too!
> 
> Title is from the hymn “Immaculate Mary,” which will be explained when my day 7 work is posted (hopefully in the next couple of weeks at the longest).
> 
> Please heed the tags, the dysphoria one is especially significant in this chapter, and check the end note for more details on what exactly they refer to.

“It’s not magic,” Tony says resolutely. “Magic is just technology that we don’t fully understand yet.”

“Feels pretty magical to me,” Natasha says dryly, only the words are coming out of _Sharon’s_ mouth, and - this is just too weird, okay, she’s _in someone else’s body,_ and the only reason she hasn’t had a panic attack yet is that she’s drawing on every single tactic she’s ever learnt to calm herself down. She doubts either SHIELD or the CIA had quite this situation in mind when they’d trained her in keeping her expression blank no matter the circumstances, but you work with the resources you’re given.

Sharon doesn’t look at Natasha again. She can’t. Ever since they both touched that artefact - why the fuck had they both been called in to consult, anyway; they don’t exactly have the same areas of expertise - she’s found it difficult to focus on anything, and she doesn’t know if that’s because her mind is trying to adjust to being in the wrong body - she can’t suppress a kind of black humour rising up inside her at that thought - or because of the moment she knows has to be coming soon, when Natasha will -

“Anyway,” Tony says loudly, and Sharon is pathetically grateful for the interruption to her thoughts. “This highly sophisticated not-magic technology - hang on, let me scan your brain again, hold still.”

God, he’s like a child sometimes, Sharon thinks, and then feels bad for the thought. She’d never much liked him when the two of them were younger; they’d crossed paths more than a few times, at important SHIELD events or awkward family-of-the-Howlies reunions, and he’d always seemed like he had way too much to prove and was determined to go about it in the worst way possible.

She could sympathise with the first half of that desire, at least, but her methods of proving herself were a little different.

He’s grown up a hell of a lot, though, over the past decade, and she knows that he’s been through more than anyone should have to deal with. They all have.

“Right,” Tony says, sounding almost unsure. Which immediately puts Sharon on high alert. One thing that can be said for Tony Stark - whether it's a positive statement or not probably depends on who's saying it - is that he’s very rarely unsure; and when he is, he usually doesn’t want to admit to it.

“What is it, Stark?” Natasha sounds exactly as tense as Sharon feels, which - oddly enough - actually puts her at ease a little. At least she’s not the only one in this fucked-up, completely illogical mess of a situation. And Natasha Romanov isn’t exactly a bad person to have on your side. Sharon's had more than a few occasions where that thought has crossed her mind - though this one is by far the strangest.

“I’m not a neuroscientist, okay, are you sure we shouldn’t -”

“Just tell us your theory,” Natasha says in a voice that - well, _could cut glass_ is a weird metaphor, but Sharon feels like it might have been invented for a moment just like this.

Tony stares at his incomprehensible holograms for a while longer. “Yeah,” he says. “I think - okay, your physical brains seem completely normal. It’s some kind of complex illusion, almost, except more than that. Your consciousnesses - that’s a weird word, is that a word, Friday?”

“It is, Mr Stark,” Friday assures him, in that cool voice which sounds so much like a person that it's actually weirder than a more robotic tone would be. Natasha twitches slightly; Sharon wonders if she’s like Steve, still expecting to hear Jarvis answer Tony’s every question.

Natasha looks seconds away from stabbing Tony. Sharon hadn’t known her face was capable of looking quite that terrifying. She clears her throat.

“Right, right,” Tony says, already spinning away into a different hologram. Sharon has no idea how he manages to keep track of them. Maybe he doesn't; maybe they're just for show. Except that would mean that he's bullshitting them right now, and Sharon doesn't want to deal with that idea. “So your consciousnesses appear to have relocated themselves," he continues, his face lit up by lines of flickering, unearthly blue light. "Or else it’s an illusion so powerful that they might as well have relocated, and for our purposes there really isn’t much of a difference. Although philosophically speaking -”

Sharon coughs. The throat-clearing obviously hadn’t been subtle enough.

Tony looks down for a second. “I don’t know how to fix this,” he says blankly. “But I know who might.”

“Wanda,” Natasha says instantly, and Tony nods.

Something inside Sharon relaxes. Maybe, just maybe, she can get out of this without having the conversation with Natasha she knows is coming, and that she can’t stop herself from dreading. “Great,” she says, already feeling more alert now that she has a specific goal. Get Wanda, get this mess sorted out, go home and open the nicest bottle of wine in her apartment. “She still lives in the Tower, right? Friday can send for her.”

With a sinking feeling inside her chest, she watches as both Natasha and Tony shake their heads.

“She went off with Vision on some do-gooder thing,” Tony says, looking apologetic. “They’re somewhere in Eastern Europe.”

“That’s very fucking vague, Stark,” Sharon says, and she almost feels bad when Tony winces a little. The words had sounded even harsher in Natasha’s voice than she’d meant them to be, somehow.

“We’ll find them,” Natasha says firmly, as though nothing in the world is going to stop her from making those words come true. Sharon tries to remember that tone of voice; it would be a very useful one for her to be able to mimic once she’s back in her own body.

Which she will be. There’s no other option. 

She just hopes that it’s soon.

“No,” Tony says, holding his hands up as they both turn to look at him. “I’m serious. You have to both stay close together. What if your minds decide to switch themselves back when you’re on different continents? Distance might be a factor.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Sharon says, but she’s already decided that it isn’t worth the risk.

“We don’t know _anything_ for sure,” Natasha says, sounding beyond frustrated.

Tony looks between them. “You can both stay on Romanov’s floor,” he offers, and Sharon looks at Natasha. Her _floor?_ She hadn’t known that Natasha and Tony were that close; she’d actually thought that there was still more than a bit of tension between them after the whole Sokovia Accords disaster.

“All the Avengers got one, no big deal,” Tony says, turning back to his workbench. Sharon’s an expert in reading body-language, especially after her training with both SHIELD and the CIA, but she’s pretty sure a five-year-old would be able to tell that it had been a very big deal. At least for Tony.

“Thanks,” she says, hoping that it comes out sincere. 

They leave Tony behind with his holograms and head up to Natasha’s floor in silence, with Friday giving the occasional direction. Sharon wonders if that means that Natasha’s never actually been to it herself. 

It’s very nice, she realises, looking around in an attempt to distract herself. All clean lines and muted colours, but somehow it doesn’t look as impersonal as it should do. The giant, very comfy-looking sofa might have something to do with that. Or the gorgeous Degas on the wall across from the main window, which Sharon really hopes is a skilful reproduction.

And then it’s just the two of them, with nothing to do other than sit and wait.

Which means they’re going to have to talk about - fuck.

Sharon is not even remotely ready for this conversation. She’s never ready for it, not really, and this situation makes it a thousand times weirder and more awkward.

“So,” Natasha says, raising one eyebrow. Sharon’s going to have to figure out how to make that expression appear on her face again when she’s back in her own body; she’d bet she’s never managed quite that level of coolness. “I suppose we should talk about the elephant in the room?”

Sharon is startled into a laugh. She cuts it off immediately when she realises it sounds more than a little hysterical. “Yeah,” she says, still unable to process that this is actually happening.

“I wasn’t expecting, well. You know.” Natasha gestures down to her - to Sharon’s - crotch, and Sharon feels every muscle in her new body - and there’s quite a few, more than she’s used to - tense up. Straight into it, then. Alright. She can work with bluntness. 

“I was never sure if you knew or not,” Sharon says in a voice that isn’t hers but that carries the strain she’s feeling with it. “You’re very observant.”

Natasha tilts her head. “Well, usually I’m looking for weaknesses to exploit. And no, I honestly had no idea.”

Sharon knows that she's lucky, in so many ways. Her family had both money and the kind of accepting attitude that had still been rare back then. Unless someone knows exactly what they're looking for, Sharon just comes across as a perfectly average woman. Which she can't help but feel guilty about sometimes, when she thinks about the millions of people who will never have access to the kinds of resources she did.

She also feels guilty when she thinks about how fucking glad she is that she had them. She loves what she looks like now, which is still such a strange thought for her to have. Well. She loves it except when it leads to moments like this - although, to be fair, it’s not like she could have predicted this situation, not even if she was the most paranoid person on earth.

“Right," she says, trying to think of something a bit less monosyllabic.

Fuck. This is so awkward. Of all the coming-out experiences Sharon’s had, this is by far the strangest. 

“It doesn’t bother me,” Natasha says, and it comes out almost hesitant. As though she isn’t sure that’s why Sharon’s acting weird.

Sharon never really knows what she’s supposed to say in response to that, anyway. _Thanks,_ probably, except she doesn’t exactly love the idea of thanking someone for basic human decency.

“Good,” she goes with instead. 

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Good, indeed,” she says. “Now, this is horribly awkward, but I think you drank a little too much coffee while we were waiting to be shown the artefact.”

Oh, God.

“Fuck,” Sharon says, feeling completely off-balance. Both mentally and physically, which isn’t a sensation she’d wish on anyone. “Ah, do you -”

“I’ll figure it out.” Natasha walks over to the bathroom, and Sharon sits down on the sofa, feeling the urge to pinch herself rise up yet again.

This isn’t a dream - or this isn’t a nightmare, would probably be a better way to put it. This is their reality for right now. Their disturbed, disturbing, completely fucked-up reality. She’s just going to have to deal with that.

“That was weird,” Natasha says a couple of minutes later, walking back into the room and sitting down at the other end of the sofa, as though she hadn’t just been holding Sharon’s junk in her hand - no. No, that thought is _way_ beyond weird.

“I’m sorry,” Sharon says quickly, not really knowing what she’s trying to apologise for. 

“What for?” Natasha looks honestly curious, and Sharon tries to think as quickly as she can. It’s not easy, not when about ninety-five percent of her brain is currently occupied with panicking as loudly and unhelpfully as it can manage.

“Um, well. This whole thing is enough of a headfuck without you having to experience dysphoria about your genitals as well,” she says, feeling vaguely proud of herself for getting out a coherent sentence. 

Clearly this whole body-swap nightmare is lowering her standards for what counts as an achievement in her life.

Natasha looks down. “I’ll cope,” she says, looking way more calm than Sharon feels - not that her expression really means anything; Sharon knows how good Natasha can be at concealing her true feelings, and she doubts that being in the wrong body has slowed her down for long. “And I’m not the only one with new parts. Isn’t it going to be weirder for _you?”_

Okay. Yeah. Sharon had been trying not to focus too much on the unfamiliar sensation between her legs. Having it brought to her notice like that makes it impossible not to, though, and she starts to feel it again, that strange absence-yet-presence that’s been demanding for her to pay attention to it for the past two hours.

She’s been trained in techniques to resist torture and interrogations, though. It can’t be that hard for her to ignore the fact that she now has the genitals she’d desperately wanted for over two decades of her life.

“I decided I didn’t want vaginoplasty a long time ago,” she says stiffly, knowing that she isn’t really answering the question.

“Still weird, though, I’m guessing,” Natasha says, and she doesn’t sound unsympathetic.

Sympathy really isn’t what Sharon’s looking for right now, though.

“How long do you think it will take them to fix this?” she asks, trying to steer the conversation away to pretty much anything else.

Natasha sighs. “Wanda can do it,” she says, sounding a lot more trusting than Sharon feels - then again, Natasha’s spent a lot of time with Wanda, whereas Sharon still has almost no idea what her powers even are. “I just don’t know how easy it will be for Tony to find her.”

“He will, though,” Sharon says, because if Natasha knows Wanda, well, she knows Tony. “He hates problems he can’t fix. And I bet it won’t be that hard, anyway. Vision kind of stands out, you know?"

“True." Natasha still doesn't look as hopeful as Sharon would like her to, though. But there isn't a whole lot she can do about that, except try to relax and hope that it somehow transfers to Natasha.

* * *

“Telling people I want to date is the worst,” Sharon says. 

They’re still on the sofa, and somehow the conversation has turned towards Sharon, which - surprisingly - she doesn’t mind. It gets a little lonely sometimes, not being out to anyone she works with, and it’s nice to have confirmation that at least one of her friends really isn’t bothered.

She hadn’t needed that confirmation, of course, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like having it.

“You don’t have to tell them,” Natasha points out, and Sharon has to look away for a moment. She doesn’t looks back; this conversation is one that might be easier without eye contact. “You don’t owe them that.”

“I know,” she says, because she _does_ know that. “But - I prefer it. I’d rather just not start something than be a few weeks in and then have them react badly. Or months,” she says, knowing that the bitterness in her voice will tell Natasha that she’s speaking from past experience.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha says, quietly honest in the way that always makes her words impossible to doubt. She makes a living with lies, essentially, but Sharon’s never found it difficult to tell when she’s being sincere.

“It’s all good.” Sharon uncrosses her legs, wincing as she knocks her ankles into each other - her legs are pretty much the same length as Natasha’s, but somehow it’s still hard to keep them coordinated. “I’m going to make something to eat. You want anything?”

“Sure,” Natasha says, picking up the nearest remote and pointing it at the TV. 

Nothing happens to the TV, but the lights change colour.

“Fucking Tony,” Sharon says, not really meaning it. “Here.” She passes Natasha the remote she’d been almost sitting on, which looks like a regular one. It still might not be, of course; they are in Stark Tower after all.

Natasha presses the main button, and an old episode of Parks and Rec appears. “Oh, I love this show,” Sharon says. “Have you seen it?”

“I think so,” Natasha says, which seems like a weird answer. She settles back into the cushions, though, and seems to be paying attention to the screen.

Sharon goes over to the little kitchen - which isn’t actually so little, really; it’s nicer than the one in her apartment - and starts putting together a couple of plates of random food from the fridge. Olives, cheese, crackers, bits of fruit salad. She wonders who restocks the fridges in the Tower - after all, Tony couldn’t possibly have known this one would be being used today. Maybe he’d sent someone up while they’d still been talking in the lab - that seems like the kind of gesture Tony would make and then refuse to ever acknowledge again.

She brings the food back over to Natasha, along with a couple of cans of Coke. They eat in silence for a few minutes, half watching the TV and half concentrating on the - very nice, actually - food.

“You’re currently allergic to garlic, by the way,” Sharon remembers to say. “Or I assume you are.”

“I’ll live,” Natasha says, spearing an olive with her fork. 

“I once had an allergic reaction on a date, when the guy ordered garlic bread and kissed me,” Sharon says, laughing at the once-humiliating memory that’s been softened by time and humour.

Natasha laughs too, quiet but real. “That’s the kind of first date story you could have told your kids.”

“Ah, it was never going to be anything more than a first date. It was just before - well, I’d just received my assignment as Kate.” Natasha can read between the lines of that without much effort, Sharon knows.

Natasha’s watching her with a curious sort of look. “Did you and Steve ever -”

Sharon shakes her head before Natasha’s even finished her question. She’s surprised Natasha doesn't know already, actually, with how close she and Steve are. “No,” she says. “Other than one kiss. It was - there was too much going on, and then he was in Wakanda, and - I don’t know. But we’re friends, still.”

Natasha nods, her expression unreadable. “Was it weird for you, meeting him?” she asks. 

“Well, I guess it was a bit odd for everyone. Captain America back from the dead, and all that.” Sharon pauses, thinking back to her first encounter with Steve. “But - yeah, it was. I’d heard so much about him, from Peggy, and then - he was just _there._ Being weirdly normal, if that isn’t an oxymoron. Yeah, it took me a little while to adjust.”

“Did your aunt not make him seem normal?” Natasha asks. “She always seemed to find it sort of funny when people hero-worshipped him.”

“Yeah, you’re right, in a way. I never idolised Steve for anything he did in the war,” Sharon says, feeling a gentle little wave of sadness wash over her at the memories of the long-gone bedtime stories. “Honestly, from the stories Peggy told me, he wasn’t a great soldier. But - I always used to ask her what she knew about his USO days. About whether he minded wearing a silly costume, or whether he looked down on the girls.”

“And?” Natasha sounds like she already knows the answer - which she probably does; she knows Steve much better than Sharon does.

“He was basically an honorary showgirl, yeah. Helped them out with their makeup, drew little cartoons for them.” 

“Adorable,” Natasha says, in that tone that means _sickening._ Sharon grins at her, and the unfamiliar way her mouth pulls up at the corners is already starting to feel just a little less strange. Which is worrying in a different kind of way - she doesn’t want to get used to this, doesn’t know if that will slow down fixing them somehow - but she decides she has enough on her plate to care too much about that.

“You should ask him out,” Natasha says, jolting Sharon out of her thoughts.

“I already turned him down once,” she points out, wincing just a little at the memory. Steve had been so sweet, and she’ll always feel just a little bad for lying to him. She’d only been doing her job, and she doesn’t regret it, but - well. Honestly, sometimes she thinks her life would have been easier if he’d let all that fame go to his head and turned into an arrogant asshole she could just ignore.

Natasha shrugs and does that little almost-lopsided smile of hers. It doesn’t look out of place, even though it’s technically Sharon’s mouth doing the smiling.

God, this is weird.

She ignores the little spark of hurt that had flared up in her chest at Natasha’s suggestion. Sharon likes Steve, sure, but not as much as she likes - well. That’s too strange and confusing to think about right now.

“Did you know he’s an LGBTQ icon?” Sharon asks, instead of continuing with that particular line of conversation.

Natasha nods. “He never shuts up about it,” she says, her voice filled with fondness and something else, something Sharon doesn’t have a name for.

“And the serum,” Sharon says, speaking slowly because she isn’t quite sure how to say the half-formed thoughts in her mind out loud. “There are a lot of trans people that talk about it, did you know?” Natasha shakes her head, looking as though she’s listening intently. “Yeah. I mean, it’s more trans men, for obvious reasons, but it’s been a big discussion point for the community ever since the information about what Steve was like when he was younger got released to the public.”

Natasha nods. “That makes sense,” she says, sounding honestly interested.

They talk for what feels like hours, pausing to watch a couple of Sharon’s favourite Parks and Rec episodes properly, taking breaks for snacks but mostly just talking. Sharon feels - well, not quite at ease, because her muscles still move wrong every time she stands up, and she jumps every time she catches a flash of red hair falling over her shoulders - but she feels comfortable, and safe, and a while later she ends up sinking deeper into the blanket covering her and letting herself fall into sleep.

* * *

Sharon feels someone tap her ankle - she hates sleeping with her feet under the covers, no matter how cold it gets - and immediately, with none of the usual in-between drifting and haziness, she’s wide awake.

She has a hideous moment of dissociation when she sees her own face leaning over her, but it passes quickly.

“Jesus, Natasha,” she mutters. “Your body has a thing for adrenaline, you know that?”

“Sharon,” is all Natasha says, her voice low and urgent, and Sharon instantly feels the last lingering remnants of sleep vanish from her mind.

She sits up, every muscle alert, knowing that she’s never been quite this ready to spring into action in her life. “I’m up. What’s wrong?”

“How do you make it stop?” 

What?

“How - make what stop? And stop what?” Sharon asks patiently. She’s awake, sure, but that doesn’t mean she wants to try to build a picture with about a tenth of the pieces, which is the way conversations with Natasha end up all too frequently.

“ _It,”_ Natasha hisses, gesturing down at - oh. _Oh._

“Fuck,” Sharon says, feeling helpless for a moment. “I - sorry,” she says, absurdly - it’s not her fault, of course it isn’t, but Natasha looks more distressed than Sharon thinks she’s ever seen her. And some of that might be the body-swap thing - damn, she’d been half-hoping that would have fixed itself by the time she woke up. It’s harder to control facial reactions when the muscles in your face are completely different to the ones you’re used to, after all.

But she doesn’t think that’s all it is.

“Sorry,” she says again. “I - did you go to the toilet? I always wake up with it like that, it usually goes down when I take a piss.”

“I know about morning wood,” Natasha says, still with the high little note of distress in her voice that’s making Sharon feel really on edge. “I already went. It’s still -”

“Okay, okay.” Sharon thinks for just a second about whether or not she’s definitely alright with the idea of the next suggestion she’s about to make, and finds that she really doesn’t care that much either way. “I mean, I do actually masturbate most mornings,” she says, determined not to let her embarrassment creep into her voice. “I started out doing it as a reclaiming my body kind of thing, but now I just - well.”

She just likes it, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. 

“No,” Natasha says, and Sharon doesn’t think she’s ever heard a more final answer in her life.

Okay then.

She isn’t going to ask if Natasha’s certain. This might be a little more complicated than the usual models of consent, but that doesn’t matter. 

She nods. “Then you just have to either wait -”

Sharon pauses when Natasha shakes her head in an almost violent movement. “Or you can take a cold shower, I guess,” she continues. “That’ll work. It won’t exactly be comfortable though, are you sure -”

Natasha’s already moving towards the bathroom, with a cushion pressed firmly over her - Sharon’s - crotch. “The Red Room waterboarded me for the first time when I was eight,” she says over her shoulder. “I can handle a _shower.”_

Sharon flinches away from that thought, and by the time she’s collected herself Natasha’s already closed the bathroom door behind her.

Well. That could have gone better.

Sharon throws her blanket off, knowing that there’s no way she’s going to go back to sleep now.

She starts heading over to the little kitchen - Tony really hadn’t been kidding when he’d said they could stay here for as long as was necessary - but pauses when she walks past the bathroom.

Natasha - God, she really hadn’t seemed okay, and while Sharon isn’t one of the people that falls for the whole super-composed, never-off-guard spy act - at least not anymore - she also doesn’t think she’s ever seen her display quite that much unguarded emotion.

Natasha isn’t even close to being emotionless, Sharon knows that. But it’s still true that she doesn’t show her feelings that openly, not even when she’s truly friends with someone. And when she does show them, it tends to be things like her terrible sense of humour and her delight in trivial things that no-one else pays attention to that come through.

Darker emotions - fear, anger, distress - Natasha letting those be visible is a rare sight.

Sharon lifts her hand up to the door, then lets it fall again.

It’s none of her business. She can hear the shower running now. Natasha will be fine - Sharon doesn’t often try the cold shower method, but when she’s in a rush it works all too well.

Before she’s really thought it through, she knocks quietly on the door.

No response. Sharon lowers her hand again. There’s not much else she can do. She isn’t about to try and pick the lock - she most likely wouldn’t be able to, anyway; she knows her capabilities, and breaking into anything Tony Stark built is beyond them - and she’s definitely not going to call anyone for help.

Natasha will be fine. She _is_ fine, probably. 

It’s just - Sharon wants to know for sure.

“It’s open,” Natasha calls out, her voice quiet but audible, even over the noise of the shower.

Sharon isn’t sure if that was an invitation or a statement, but she’s going to guess the former. Still, she opens the door slowly, giving Natasha more than enough time to tell her to get out.

There’s none of the usual steam in the room, so Sharon can see Natasha clearly the second she’s inside. She swallows, trying not to overreact. Or to react at all, really; she doesn’t want to make Natasha even more on edge than she clearly already is.

The absurdity of treating Natasha Romanov like a frightened animal isn’t lost on Sharon, but since she hopes that she’s one of the few people Natasha allows to see the woman underneath the many personas, she isn’t going to overthink her reactions too much. Or, well. She’ll try not to.

Natasha is sitting on the floor of the very roomy bathtub, knees up and head down, her spine curved so that she’s in an almost fetal position. The detachable shower head is tucked between her knees, where it must be pouring freezing water onto her - well, Sharon’s; the distinction suddenly seems important in this case - crotch.

Fuck.

“It’s probably gone by now,” Sharon says hesitantly. She knows her own body. Probably a lot better than most cis women do, actually; she’s vacillated between ignoring its existence, examining every inch of it, and finally settling into a comfortable acceptance of it, quirks and all, over the years.

And her body isn’t exactly fond of pain, and ice-cold water being directed at its most sensitive area definitely counts as pain. Any trace of an erection will have been long gone after the first ten seconds of that treatment.

“It is,” Natasha says, still not taking the showerhead away.

Right. Sharon honestly has no idea what to do here. Not that she has to do anything, obviously. Natasha’s a grown adult, and can make her own - bad, painful - decisions. But, well. She’s also Sharon’s friend, and she doesn’t like seeing her friends hurting.

“I’m asexual,” Natasha says stiffly, and Sharon feels like a very important puzzle piece just clicked into place inside her head. “And very sex-repulsed. If you don’t know what that means you can ask Friday.”

Sharon had been about to say that she does know exactly what it means, but she’s sidetracked by the last few words. “Tony has his AI in the _bathrooms?”_

Natasha shrugs, looking kind of wary. Sharon does want to get back to the important topic, she does, but she would also really like to know if she’s being fucking spied on when she takes a shower. “In personal areas you have to voice-activate it,” Natasha says. “It’s Tony, did you really expect anything else?”

Sharon shakes her head. “No, but - what if I just said, I don’t know, I’m going to the movies next Friday?” She looks up, even though she _knows_ that Tony’s tech is mostly installed in the walls. There’s no sign of anything switching itself on, of course.

“You have to say it with a certain inflection,” Natasha says. “Like - _Friday.”_

“Good morning, Ms Romanov,” comes the almost-real voice from all around them. Fuck. Sharon would be the jumpiest person alive if she had to live in this Tower full-time.

“Any news about Wanda?” Sharon asks, because they might as well make use of Friday before deactivating her - it? - again. And because she’s trying not to think too much about how horrible it must have been for Natasha, who - what was the word she’d used - who lives her life repulsed by the idea of having sex, and who was suddenly faced with having to occupy a body which makes its physical arousal known in just about the most obvious, unignorable way possible.

Sharon is trying not to feel guilty, because there’s no way this is her fault, but - but she can’t control her feelings, unfortunately.

“Mr Stark has made progress,” Friday says, which is no kind of answer at all.

“Right,” Sharon says, trying to think of a polite way to dismiss the AI, and then wondering why she even cares at all. “Um. Thanks. You can go now, Friday.”

“Deactivating,” is the response, and then the room is quiet again. Except for the still running water, of course, which is making Sharon feel more and more uneasy with every passing second.

“Do you like having a vagina?” Natasha asks suddenly.

That was out of nowhere.

Well, not really, Sharon thinks after another second. She just doesn’t know how to respond.

“I’ve been trying to not pay that much attention to it, really,” she says honestly.

She’s been to the bathroom, obviously, but she hadn’t really looked at it. It feels invasive, for a start, because it doesn’t belong to her, but even if Natasha gave her explicit permission - no, it would still feel wrong, she’s pretty sure.

And besides, she doesn’t _want_ to like having it. 

“Oh,” is all Natasha says, which gives Sharon nothing helpful to go off.

“I - it’s probably best if I don’t get used to it, you know,” she tries to explain. “We’re going to swap back, and I want that. I can’t deny I’m a bit curious,” she adds, because curiosity is part of human nature and of _course_ she’s wondered what it would feel like. 

“I can make it orgasm, if you want to see what it’s like” Natasha says, in a very - clinical sort of way. It makes something inside Sharon go cold, just for a moment. She isn’t sure if it was the phrasing - Sharon’s called her junk _it_ before, but never with quite that level of detachment - or the word _make,_ but Sharon’s never wanted to turn down an offer of sex - if that would even qualify - more in her life.

God, this whole situation is so messed up. Why couldn’t it have happened to two other people - Steve and Sam, maybe, or just _anyone_ other than her and Natasha.

“I’m good,” she says, making sure that her tone leaves absolutely no room for interpretation. “And you’re freezing, come on.” She keeps her voice brisk rather than gentle, knowing without knowing why that Natasha will respond better that way. She reaches behind her and pulls a towel off the nearest rack. “Oh, wow,” she says, unable to resist from sinking her hand into it. “This feels like a solid cloud, or something. Come on.”

Natasha switches off the shower and slowly uncurls herself, her movements stiff and just a little uncertain. She steps out of the bath before reaching for the towel and wrapping it around herself, and Sharon - who’s still crouching down - experiences possibly the most surreal moment of her life when she’s face to - well, when she’s looking right at her own crotch from a very suggestive angle.

“This is so fucking weird,” she mutters, not expecting a reply.

“So weird,” Natasha echoes. “And this is very nice,” she says, pulling the towel further around herself. “Not like a cloud at all. Clouds are damp and nebulous.”

Sharon stands up, laughing. “Okay, Ms Literal. It’s like - like a hug from a very fluffy bear?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Animal fur doesn’t smell that nice. And bears have claws.”

“I give up,” Sharon says, knowing that she’s being made fun of and enjoying every second of it. She’d way rather have a teasing Natasha than one huddled under a freezing shower, terrified of something that she can’t control. “Come on. Let’s go see what we can find for breakfast.”

“I make excellent pancakes,” Natasha says, and Sharon doesn’t think it’s a peace offering, not exactly. It’s - well, it’s an offering, anyway, and one she isn’t about to turn down.

She smiles. “Pancakes sound great.”

* * *

“A trans woman and an asexual woman body-swapped by a magical artefact,” Sharon says grandly. “They should do a TV show on us.”

They’re on the comfy sofa, this time with wine glasses and a rapidly-emptying bottle of Shiraz sitting on the coffee table. Sharon doesn’t feel quite as tipsy as she thinks she usually would after two and a half glasses; she’s wondering if Natasha’s body is somehow more immune to the effects of alcohol than hers is. 

Probably. Not much would surprise her at this point.

“I'm not sure the world is ready for that just yet,” Natasha says, in that dryly amused tone that means she's not feeling on edge anymore – or not as much, at least, and Sharon's in a mood to take comfort in small victories.

Maybe Natasha’s relaxation is coming from the fact that she’s currently in a body that - if Sharon’s right, anyway - is a lot more susceptible to alcohol than the one she’s used to.

Sharon should probably warn her about that.

She frowns when she thinks about Natasha’s comment. “They've had weirder. Have you ever seen Doctor Who?”

Natasha laughs quietly. Sharon tries to ignore just how happy it makes her that she was the one causing that laughter. “I didn't mean that,” Natasha says, rolling her eyes. “I meant I doubt they're ready to air a sci-fi show with trans or ace stars.”

Oh. That - is probably true. How annoying.

“Damn,” Sharon says, raising her glass to Natasha to show that she concedes the point. “You may be right there. God, the world sucks sometimes.”

“Yeah.” Natasha’s voice is almost inaudible, and Sharon looks over at her again. She’s been looking away more often than she usually would in a conversation with someone, and she’s pretty sure that Natasha’s been doing the same thing.

It’s just - it’s still so weird, and Sharon doesn’t think she needs to worry anymore about them ever getting used to this. Watching her own mouth move independently, without any kind of reflection or film being involved - well, it’s a mind-fuck every time she makes eye contact with Natasha, basically, so she isn’t particularly eager to do it all that often.

It’s late afternoon now, which means it’s been a day and a half since - well, since. Sharon is trying very hard not to let any of the panicked little thoughts that keep trying to make themselves known - _maybe we’ll be like this forever, Tony hadn’t known how to fix it, maybe Vision took Wanda to outer space, that seems like a fucked-up thing that could happen_ \- break through into the forefront of her mind.

It’s not a very successful effort. And the wine isn’t helping as much as she’d hoped it would.

“Excuse me,” a voice says from nowhere, and Sharon’s hand automatically goes to her gun - no, to where her gun _would_ be, if she wasn’t wearing yoga pants and a hoodie right now - before she recognises the slightly detached, clear tones for what they are.

“I thought you said it was voice-activated?” she hisses to Natasha, knowing that the AI will hear her but not really caring.

Natasha just shrugs. “Tony has an override. What does he want, Friday?”

“Mr Stark has located Ms Maximoff and - Vision,” Friday says. Sharon doesn’t miss the almost imperceptible hitch before the AI says Vision, and wonders if it had been because it’s programmed to include titles where possible, which is difficult with a - a being like Vision.

Or maybe because Friday is aware of the circumstances of Vision’s creation, and of her own.

Sharon will be so glad to leave this place, and not just because she’ll be back in her own body when she does. Tony can keep his terrifyingly intelligent robots and his invasive AI. Sharon’s far from a technophobe - she would never have made it as far as she did in SHIELD if she was - but there are some things that are just plain scary.

“That’s great,” Natasha says, sounding tense. “We’ll be down at the lab in an hour.”

Sharon glances at her. “Why don’t you sound happier?” 

This is what they’ve been hoping for, every single second of the past two days. Well, Sharon has at least, and she doubts Natasha is much different. 

Natasha looks back. Sharon doesn’t break her gaze, the way she instinctively wants to. She meets her own eyes, which seem as though they’re filled with something they’ve never experienced before. 

“Let’s get ready,” Natasha says, grim and quiet, and Sharon realises why she doesn’t seem more excited.

It’s because she can’t afford to hope, and then to have those hopes crushed.

Sharon can sympathise with that, she really can. It would be terrible, to go down and have Wanda work her magic and then have nothing happen. But - Natasha can’t bring herself to hope, and Sharon can’t make herself do otherwise.

They can’t live like this. Not forever.

So this will work. There are no other options.

* * *

Sharon drifts into wakefulness very, very slowly. She’s conscious of a distant echo of pain, almost like a migraine that’s trying to target her entire skull, but she guesses that she’s either on painkillers or Wanda is blocking the sensation with some of her - wait. _Wanda._

How had she managed to forget why she was lying here in the first place?

“Did it work,” she tries to say, and hears a faint, garbled little stammer leave her mouth.

Oh, God. What if they fucked things up even more? What if whichever body she’s in now is damaged beyond repair? What if -

“It worked very well,” Wanda says, in that calm voice that always makes Sharon forget how young she still is.

Oh, thank God. And thank supernatural magical powers, or whatever the hell Wanda has.

She manages to open her eyes - _her_ eyes, her own ones, with the left one slightly weaker than the right, and she's never been this relieved in her life - enough to see Wanda leaning over her, smiling gently, with a cloud of tiny red lights twinkling around her head. 

Sharon close her eyes again. Opens them. Yeah, the lights are definitely still there.

"You're not hallucinating," Natasha says, and Sharon turns her head towards the voice that she'd almost started to get used to speaking with.

"Good to know," she says, and she can't help but grin at Natasha, who smiles her own small smile back.

They're fixed. They're back to normal. This is the best moment of Sharon's life. She's never, ever, ever going to let herself feel any kind of negativity towards her body again. Who cares if it isn't perfect? Who gives a fuck if it might not be the ideal female form, or bullshit like that?

It's _hers,_ and that means more to her than anything else. She's going to hold onto this feeling for the rest of her life.

"Thank you, Wanda," Sharon says, not sure if she's ever felt quite this level of gratitude before.

“You're very welcome. Now you can kiss,” Wanda says in a very pleased-with-herself sort of voice. Her happy expression fades when both Natasha and Sharon turn to stare very pointedly at her, though.

Wanda cocks her head, as though she’s listening to something no-one else can hear. Sharon doesn’t know a whole lot about her powers - she isn’t sure anyone does, which is at least mildly horrifying - so as far as she knows that might just be the simple truth. The lights are still shining around her head, but they're starting to fade a little.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Wanda says. Sharon can’t help but notice that she doesn’t _sound_ at all sorry. “Your thoughts are very loud. And I was just inside your minds for a long time.” Natasha flinches, very slightly at that, which finally makes Wanda look at them in true apology. “I am sorry,” she repeats. “I will leave you two now, to -”

“Just go,” Natasha says, sounding tired and lost and - and defeated, which is the one word Sharon would have said could never be applied to Natasha Romanov. Well, that or _simple._

Wanda leaves, with one last glance behind her. She makes a gesture to Natasha that Sharon can’t decipher. Not that she tries very hard. Most of her attention is occupied on

“Proprioception,” Natasha says after a few seconds of silence.

Sharon raises one eyebrow. “Bless you?”

Natasha rolls her eyes. It looks a thousand times more right than the same movement had looked when she was inside Sharon’s body - god, there’s no good way to phrase sentences like that, is there?

“Proprioception,” she says again. “It’s the awareness of how your body occupies the space around it. It helps you know where to move your limbs unconsciously, and things like that. That’s partly why we felt so - so wrong, even though we have fairly similar body types.”

“Other than the obvious,” Sharon feels obliged to point out. She feels overly conscious of her groin in a way she hasn’t been since she was a teenager starting to go through the wrong puberty. “That makes sense, though.” She stretches her arms above her head, feeling her shoulders click at exactly the right moment, revelling in the utterly familiar range - and limitation, she thinks, smiling to herself as she sees Natasha sink effortlessly into the splits - of motion.

“Other than that,” Natasha says, leaning forward over her leg and wrapping both hands around her foot. She seems a bit less exhausted now. Sharon wonders just much of a toll the last two days have taken on her - on either of them, really - and she hopes that it won’t be a lasting one.

Sharon arches her back, arms still overhead. “God, it’s good to be back.”

“Wanda wasn’t wrong,” Natasha says abruptly. Sharon pulls out of her stretch as quickly as she can, looking at Natasha only to see that her head is still down, the only visible edge of her expression unreadable.

“Um,” Sharon says, because she literally can’t think of anything to say. She hadn’t expected Natasha to be anything like this direct - or not about this, anyway. She had wondered if she was imagining the connection between them. Or if it was there but only fuelled by their fucked-up circumstances, destined to fade once they were back to their regular lives.

“She wasn’t right either,” Natasha adds.

Sharon lets that hang in the air for a couple of seconds. When she realises that Natasha probably isn’t going to clarify, she sighs. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

Natasha sighs. “I don’t particularly want to kiss you.” Sharon tries not to let her heart sink too much; it had sounded like there was more to that sentence. “But that’s only because I’m not a big fan of kissing. I - is this how you felt in high school?” She swears quietly, and in Russian - Sharon assumes it’s a swear word, anyway; those kind of inflections tend to cross language barriers pretty easily.

“Okay,” Sharon says, trying to pull her thoughts together into one coherent stream. It’s not that easy. “So - you aren’t big on physical affection, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to date - um, people?”

_Me?_

Natasha just makes a humming kind of noise in agreement. Sharon tries not to feel frustrated at how one-sided this conversation feels; she doesn’t know a whole lot - well, anything, really - about Natasha’s previous dating history, but she’s getting the sense that this isn’t easy for her.

It’s not all that simple for Sharon, either, if she’s being honest with herself. She’s been on more than a handful of dates, and she’s had a couple of not very lengthy relationships, but nothing that she counts as particularly serious. And that’s been more a result of her job than anything else - telling your partner that you might have to leave the country for several weeks and that you won’t be able to stay in touch isn’t exactly part of the recipe for a committed relationship. Especially when you can’t even tell them _why_ you’re leaving.

The obvious solution to that would have been to date within SHIELD, but Sharon had always been hesitant about that. Which she’s very glad of now. She doesn’t exactly care if her colleagues know she’s trans, she isn’t ashamed of it, but sometimes it’s just easier to let them assume what they want to. 

So it’s been a while since she seriously considered starting a relationship with someone, and part of her is wondering if that had been because she was already interested in someone. It had taken her a while to warm up to Natasha, she can admit that much, but she’s beyond glad that she did. They're good friends now, and she doesn't ever want to lose that, but if the possibility of them being something more - something else - is really and truly there, well, Sharon doesn't want to lose out on that either.

The lack of a sex life is one thing that she already knows for sure won’t bother her; she’s had no issues with taking of that on her own for years now. So there really is not reason for her not to ask. She can at least do that much.

“Natasha Romanov,” she says, not wanting to second-guess her own thoughts for a single moment more. “I think we should go on a date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, both main characters experience significant dysphoria as a result of their bodyswap, and it gets angsty.
> 
> Sharon: is a trans woman who decided not to go for bottom surgery, so suddenly having a vagina brings up a lot of complicated emotions. She decides to try not to think about it too much, and in the end just wants her regular body back, 'quirks [dick] and all,' as she puts it. She is pretty self-aware, so while there is a lot of discussion of dysphoria from her POV, it isn't horrendously angsty.
> 
> Unlike...
> 
> Natasha: :( I'm sorry. Natasha is asexual and very sex-repulsed (as in she hates the thought of herself having sex, whereas some ace people are still happily sexually active). She experiences almost zero mental or physical arousal in her day-to-day life, which she is happy with. Then in this chapter, while in Sharon's body, she experiences an erection, which is a symptom of (physical) arousal that for obvious reasons is hard to ignore. This makes her very upset/panicked. Sharon says she can masturbate, but Natasha refuses, and she ends up sitting miserably under a very cold shower. This is all from Sharon's POV; Sharon is understandably upset and worried for her friend. It's angsty, seriously.
> 
> Okay, next chapter is fluff and rainbows and polyamory negotiations. Yay.
> 
> Feedback and concrit welcome!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we get to the fluff! (Originally this story was only the first chapter, but then I couldn't quite bear to leave it alone.)

“What about sleeping with someone? Like, in the same bed, not -”

“I know what you meant,” Natasha says. “And maybe. I think I’m a blanket-stealer, though.”

Sharon laughs. “Well, I can’t say I haven’t been warned.”

Things have been going so well over the past couple of weeks - Sharon would say _too_ well, except she’s trying this new thing where she doesn’t wonder when every good thing in her life is going to come to a sudden end. 

They’re at Sharon’s apartment right now, after their third date - they’d gone to an ice-cream parlour and tried a little of every flavour; Natasha’s sweet tooth seems to be insatiable - and while Sharon is technically aware that the third date has a certain stereotype surrounding it, she isn’t thinking about that at all right now.

This doesn’t need anything more added to it. She isn’t sacrificing a single thing she wants by being here with Natasha like this - side-by-side on the sofa, blankets over them, picking at the fancy chocolates Natasha had brought - it should be cake, really, she’d said, and Sharon makes a mental note to look up a few more of the asexual community’s little in-jokes - and lazily watching TV. Or not watching, really, so much as using it as background noise for the conversation about boundaries that Natasha has finally agreed would be a good idea.

“Hand-holding?” Sharon says, trying to make sure that not even a hint of hopefulness creeps into her voice.

Natasha doesn’t answer. Or, well, she doesn’t answer with words; instead, she takes her left hand from where it was folded in the blanket, steals the chocolate Sharon was holding, pops it in her mouth, and then links her hand with Sharon’s - now free - one.

“Good to know,” Sharon says, smiling in a way that she has a horrible feeling a romance novel might describe as love-struck, or something equally corny and embarrassing.

“What about you?” Natasha asks, moving so that she’s facing Sharon.

“What do you mean?”

Natasha just looks at her. “Don’t tell me you don’t have some boundaries of your own. Or things you’d like me to know.”

Oh. Sharon can’t help but feel under scrutiny right now, and it seems vaguely unfair that Natasha had been able to talk without eye contact the entire time. But - well, she’d be a hypocrite if she said she didn’t have anything to say, and now seems like a good moment for it.

“Fine,” she says, linking her fingers back through Natasha’s. “Ah - there's a few things."

Natasha keeps watching her as she stumbles through explanations of language and preferred terms, things she hasn't had to talk about it a long time - and part of her had wondered if she'd ever be in this situation again; she'd almost resigned herself to a life alone, and she only truly recognises that resignation now that she knows - hopes - it won't ever be reality.

It's an amazing, strange, perception-altering feeling, and she clings onto it the way she's holding onto Natasha's hand.

Like a lifeline that she'd never expected to be thrown.

* * *

“Of course I don’t want to date Steve,” Sharon says, incredulous at the fact that Natasha had even asked that question.

They’ve been together for well over a month now, and - other than a couple of arguments about both of them trying to hide their bad days from each other - things have been going great. Sharon keeps wanting to pinch herself.

And then, completely out of nowhere, this had happened. Natasha hadn’t even _asked_ if Sharon was still interested in Steve, she’d just pointed it out as though it was an already-established fact. 

The most irritating thing is that it’s technically true. Sharon does occasionally wonder if she and Steve could have made something work, but it’s mostly an abstract kind of wondering, a _what-if_ that she has no desire to make reality.

Natasha just shrugs, not looking at all put off. “It’s fine,” she says. “I don’t mind, you know.”

That is not even slightly the point Sharon was getting at.

“Anyway, I’m pretty sure Steve is half in love with Sam,” Sharon says, because if Natasha isn’t accepting that Sharon isn’t interested, maybe pointing out that Steve also isn’t - probably, anyway - will do the trick.

It had taken her a while to notice the way Steve and Sam look at each - mostly because she hadn’t been expecting it at all, which she feels a little ashamed of - but once she’d started noticing it had been impossible to stop. She thinks they’ve started dating officially now, because every time they meet for a coffee and a catch-up Steve gets that look on his face that means he very badly wants to tell her something but isn’t sure how he’ll take it.

He would have made such a terrible spy, Sharon thinks - not for the first time.

Natasha shrugs. “So?”

“So? What do you mean, so?” Steve is almost definitely with Sam, and she’s - very definitely - with Natasha. Why on earth would they want to change that, when they’re all happy already?

Don’t fix what isn’t broken, and all that.

“People never think of the obvious solution,” Natasha says, looking at Sharon in a way that makes her - not uncomfortable, exactly, more - she can’t quite put a finger on it; she just knows that her life is about to be altered in some small, indefinable way.

“And what’s that?”

“Polyamory, duh,” Natasha says, looking more than a little pleased with herself.

* * *

“Steve,” Sharon says, hoping that no trace of nervousness is showing either in her voice or on her face. Steve looks back at her. For once, his expression isn’t giving much away about what he’s thinking. “I was wondering. Would you like to go on a real date, sometime?”

It’s a couple of months since Natasha and Sharon had that awkward conversation about all the different kinds of polyamorous relationships. She knows that Natasha had brought it up to Steve and Sam, probably much too directly - although directness tends to be a good thing, with Steve especially; otherwise he’s never quite sure if he’s reading too much into a situation. 

So that issue is out of the way. But Natasha had left Sharon’s rather more personal - well, _issue_ isn’t quite how she wants to describe it, but she can’t think of a better way - more personal aspect of herself, then, for her to tell Steve.

Steve blinks for a second, looking a little taken aback, but not nearly as much as he would have done if Natasha hadn’t talked to him already.

“Wait,” she says quickly, wondering if it would have been easier to tell him before she’d asked him out. Probably, because she’s pretty certain that he’d been about to say yes, and having that knowledge if he rejects her now is going to make it just that much more painful. “There’s something I want you to know first, though.”

“Okay,” he says, not sounding all that worried.

She takes a deep breath. “I’m -” 

Wait. Would Steve even know what being trans is? She has no idea how detailed the catch-ups on all the history he’d missed had been

It’s too late to worry about that now, though.

“I’m transgender,” she says firmly, and her voice doesn’t catch even a little.

Small victories.

Steve’s gaze flicks down to her crotch for a split second, but she guesses that it had been an unconscious movement, because when his eyes move back to her face he looks very apologetic.

“And if that changes your answer, well.” _I’ll understand,_ she’d been about to say, but - that wouldn’t be quite true, and she doesn’t want to start this off even on a half-truth. She thinks that both she and Steve have had enough of those for a lifetime. She still isn’t quite sure how he feels about Kate. “Then it changes your answer,” she says instead. And that’s all there is to it.

“It doesn’t,” Steve says immediately, and Sharon raises one eyebrow, trying not to let her relief show. “I mean - yes. My answer was yes, it still is. Sorry, I’m so bad at this. Did Peggy ever tell - um.”

He falls silent, clearly not knowing what the protocol is for talking about your ex when your ex also happens to be the great-aunt of the person you’re interested in dating. Which is completely fair enough. Hell, Sharon would be pretty worried about the state of modern society if there _was_ a protocol for that.

“Steve,” she says, keeping her voice calm. “If we stop ourselves every time we want to mention her, there’s going to be a lot of unfinished conversations between us.”

Steve bows his head. “Right. You’re - yeah,” he says. She wonders if he’ll always be just a little in love with Peggy, and realises that she doesn’t mind the thought as much as she might have expected to.

“Next Friday?” she asks, still feeling slightly on edge even though he’s already agreed.

“Friday,” he says, solemn but smiling. “Looking forward to it.”

 **Steve said yes?** she texts Natasha later, when she’s back at her apartment and curled up on the sofa with a Brooklyn 99 episode she’s already seen twice playing in the background.

She gets an instant reply.

**obviously. why the question mark.**

Sharon had actually typed that without really thinking through why, so she doesn’t know what to say. Is she still doubting Steve’s easy acceptance? She doesn’t think so. Or at least she doesn’t want to think she’s thinking - ugh. Her brain isn’t awake enough to deal with that kind of twisting logic right now.

 **question mark redacted :)** she sends back.

No, she isn’t doubting Steve. Or even herself, not really. Not anymore.

**:)**

* * *

Sharon really, really wants to text Natasha right now.

She can't, though. She isn't completely up-to-date with all the etiquette and rules surrounding the beginning of a new relationship, but she has a feeling that texting your current girlfriend is definitely not on the approved list.

Steve knows about Natasha, obviously, but that's not the point. He isn't texting Sam, so she shouldn't feel the need to check in with _her_ partner. Other partner. Something.

Sharon has a feeling that this polyamory thing is going to be just a little more complicated than she'd been anticipating.

It's not like things have been horribly awkward, or anything like that. She mostly just wants to text Natasha so that she can get some kind of vague reassurance that everyone involved really is okay with all this, and with the amount of times she's asked that already she wouldn't put it past Natasha to ignore the message anyway.

So she's not going to worry about that anymore. She's just going to enjoy the date, and hope that Steve's enjoying it as well. They're at a nice restaurant – Steve says it was recommended to him once, as a place celebrities could go without worrying about paparazzi or tabloid gossip following them around. He'd looked kind of distant when he'd been explaining that to her, which she has a feeling means that Tony had been the one to tell Steve about it.

Their conversation has been – fine, so far. Not stilted, not uncomfortable. She had already known that she and Steve get on and have a fair amount in common, which helps – she's never been a big fan of blind dating – but that doesn't change the simple fact that the dynamic is different because they're on a date, rather than just hanging out as friends.

They'd both ordered pasta dishes. Sharon's is excellent so far, and Steve's looks good as well. She's drinking wine – by the glass, and pacing herself with water. Steve's just drinking Coke.

He notices her quick glance at his glass.

“I know I can still appreciate alcohol, even if it doesn't get me drunk” he says with a quick smile. “But I'm afraid I'm not doing a very good job of it so far.”

At least that's a new conversation topic. They can talk about their drinks, instead of how lovely the food is. “Oh? What have you tried?”

“Well, the usual,” he says. “Wine, of course. And we drank either beer or whiskey when we could get it, back in the war – though I'm not sure I should class either of those as drinks, really. Dernier had this concoction, he called it – sorry, let me see if I remember how Gabe translated it. The 'paradise of oblivion,' I think. Which sounded a bit less awful in French.”

He stops, suddenly, even though Sharon doesn't think his story had been over. “Sorry,” he says, glancing down at his plate. “You don't want to hear old war stories.”

“Steve,” Sharon says, trying not to show her amusement too openly. “I pretty much never got tired of Peggy's war stories. I mean, she toned them down a bit for me when I was little.” Sharon isn't sure if Peggy ever told her the truth about certain things, actually, and she's resigned herself to never knowing for sure. “But yeah, you don't have to worry. If anything, I can probably tell _you_ a few tales.”

“Really?” Steve asks, looking more relaxed now than he has all evening. “I'm glad she wanted to talk about it, I guess. I heard a lot of stories about people who kept everything bottled up, after the war.”

“Well, she didn't tell just anyone. I was always the closest to Peggy, out of all her nieces and nephews. Maybe because I always wanted to follow in her footsteps.” Sharon takes a quick breath. It doesn't really make her feel any calmer. “Or maybe because I was named after you. I don't know.”

Steve tilts his head to the side, frowning. “Not really? I think the female equivalent of Steve would be Stephanie.”

Sharon looks at him. It takes about five seconds for him to catch on.

“Oh - _oh,”_ he says, blushing slightly. “Steve was your – um, old name?”

She nods. “Birth name, deadname, yeah.”

That had decidedly not been Peggy's decision; it had been her parents' way of honouring the man who had – indirectly, and in a very unusual way – had a great deal of impact on the Carter family's history.

Sharon desperately wishes she could have been a fly on the wall when Peggy had been informed of the name they were giving to her newest nephew.

Steve looks like he's worrying that he'd offended her somehow, but if anything the opposite is true. His reaction – forgetting that her name hadn't been Sharon all along, for obvious reasons – reassures her that he truly doesn't think of her as anything other than a woman.

Hopefully it doesn't mean that he's going to _forget_ that she's trans, but she doubts it. He's been great so far, and – despite working as a secret agent for several years – she isn't a big fan of needless paranoia.

“That's so weird,” Steve says, then holds his hands up quickly, before she can reply. “Not your – not you! I just meant the idea of having children named after me.”

Sharon laughs. “Look up the number of kids called Steve or Stephanie in the decade after World War Two. Seriously.”

He scrunches up his nose. She refuses to admit that it's kind of adorable. “I still don't think I'm a good choice for a namesake. I hope there were lots of Margarets as well.

Sharon smiles at him, knowing that her eyes won’t be echoing the smile. “Peggy wasn't a public figure until much later,” she reminds him. “Most of the important work she did went unrecognised.”

He frowns, as predicted, and opens his mouth as though he's about to give another speech about how unfair that was. Sharon's heard it before, and she agrees with every word, but – right now isn't about Peggy.

She can't think of a good way to say that, though, so she decides to derail Steve in a different way. “There were even a few kids called Bucky,” she says lightly.

 _That_ gets the reaction she'd been hoping for – Steve looks like he's torn between mild horror and hysteria.

“Please tell me you're joking,” he says. “Even Bucky didn't like being called Bucky!”

“At least there weren't any Dum-Dums that I heard of,” Sharon says, unable to stop herself from laughing a little at the look on his face.

She takes another bite of her pasta. It's cold by now, but she finds that she doesn't care. Steve is smiling at her laughter, and he doesn't mind at all that she isn't quite the conventional woman every reporter in America seems to think he should be dating, and –

And this is going to work. This is going to be something good. She can feel it.

* * *

“Wait,” Sam says, putting his fork down. “You - I definitely never heard about this. How did I not know that the two of you were _body-swapped?_ How is that even possible?”

The four of them - Sharon, Natasha, Sam and Steve - are at Sam’s house for a quiet little pre-Christmas dinner. Sharon had tried to protest the invitation at first - well, her first refusal had been on autopilot, but her second one had been more carefully considered - but Natasha had talked her into it.

Without too much effort, if Sharon’s being honest.

 _We’re all friends,_ Natasha had pointed out. _It doesn’t make sense for us to stop hanging out as a group just because some of us happen to be dating._

And - well, that had been pretty hard to argue against, and Sharon hadn’t really wanted to anyway. Natasha had been right, as it turned out; the only awkward moment had been when Steve had proudly presented the soup he’d made as a starter, only for the rest of them to taste it and quickly realise that there was an uncomfortable amount of salt in the mixture.

Well. That had been the only such moment until now, of course.

Sharon glances at Steve, who is looking just as clueless as Sam.

“Sharon never mentioned it?” Natasha asks, looking curiously at Sharon. 

She glares back, trying to convey something along the lines of _that was a very fucking pointless question; if I had mentioned it they wouldn’t be staring at us like we’re zoo animals right now._

Natasha’s good at reading people, but she’d have to be literally psychic to get that message, Sharon’s aware.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Steve and Sam exchanging glances, clearly realising that they might be about to be stuck in the middle of a lover’s quarrel.

Sharon isn’t going to let that happen. “Technically it wasn’t a body-swap,” she says, thinking through the fastest way to recite the facts of the situation so that they can move on to something - anything - else. “It was a consciousness-swap, and it was fixed in less than forty-eight hours.”

“How?” Sam asks, and Sharon wonders if he knows who they went to already.

“We stayed in Stark Tower,” she says, ignoring Steve’s face completely. “And Tony managed to get in touch with Wanda and Vision. She managed to fix us without any lasting side-effects.”

More-or-less, anyway. But the others don’t need to know about the weeks that followed those two days; the dreams that she doesn't know if she should be calling nightmares, where Wanda hadn't managed to fix it after all, her first half-hearted attempts to masturbate that had failed completely, in a way they hadn't in years. No. Those are things she's more than happy to keep to herself.

She knows that Natasha might need, or deserve, to know. And one day they’ll talk about it. But - not right now, she thinks, hoping that Natasha's on the same page.

“How did - that must have been a horrible thing to go through,” Steve says, sounding nothing but concerned. Sharon’s glad that he’s clearly decided to ignore the mention of Tony. That’s a minefield that can wait for a time that’s not a - supposedly - peaceful, calm dinner.

“It was a stressful couple of days,” Sharon says tightly, wishing that someone would think of a new and fascinating angle on Steve’s overuse of salt, or something. “What with Natasha having to deal with the surprise dick thing and all.” 

Sam chokes on the sip of wine he’d just taken. “Um, _what?”_ he says, looking way more confused than he should be. Unless -

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“Steve,” Sharon says, very patiently. “Are you telling me that Sam has no idea I’m trans?”

She doesn’t look at Sam. He won’t be bothered by the minor revelation; she’s about as certain of that as she ever can be about people’s reactions. 

“You told me not to out people without their consent!” Steve says, looking like he’s torn between two very rational points of view and is feeling kind of annoyed about it. 

Right. She had said that. In pretty much those exact words, actually; she spares a moment to think that it’s nice Steve remembers them so clearly.

“Okay, I stand by that one hundred percent,” Sharon says, trying to resist the urge to put her head in her hands. “But when you said things like you’d been talking to Sam about introducing a support group for trans veterans at the VA, I kind of assumed that you’d mentioned it to him at some point. You can understand my confusion.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “I didn’t think about that. Um. Sam doesn’t mind, though.”

“Not to interrupt,” Sam says, clearly interrupting. “And Sam indeed does not mind, Sam is not a transphobic asshole, and Sam can speak for himself. But seriously, before the whole dick surprise thing - double dick surprise, I guess, since I’m now included -”

Natasha lets out a very sudden laugh, which makes Sharon jump slightly.

“Okay, I could have phrased that better,” Sam says. “Seriously though, moving on for a second, can we please go back to the body-swap story long enough for you to tell me how the fuck I can avoid that happening to me?”

“There was an artefact,” Natasha says dismissively - and very vaguely, really; _an artefact_ doesn’t exactly tell Sam what to look out for.

“Alien,” Sharon adds. “It’s been destroyed.” Both Steve and Sam look less than convinced at that, and given the track records of people they’ve worked with in the past hiding things from them - herself and Natasha included, she can admit that - she doesn’t blame them for being a bit doubtful. “I watched Tony blast it with about a dozen lasers,” she says. “It’s definitely gone.”

“Good,” Steve says firmly. “I don’t even want to think about the damage that could have been done with that.”

Steve looks like he’s picturing the same terrible scenarios that had crossed Sharon’s mind more than once. She’s glad that the artefact had been thoroughly destroyed; she doesn’t give a fuck how useful it might have been for research purposes. Everyone should have learned their goddamn lesson after the Tesseract.

Sam is looking between Sharon and Natasha, clearly wondering if the incident _had_ caused some kind of damage, albeit nothing world-ending.

Natasha smiles quickly at Sam, and Sharon wonders - not for the first time - if the feeling she gets sometimes that Natasha and Sam might want to complete the fourth side of their weird little square is actually right.

She hasn’t asked Natasha about it yet, and it isn’t because she dislikes the idea. She just - she gets the feeling that Natasha has a lot of complicated reservations about it, and while she hopes that Natasha would talk about them if she wanted to, she doesn’t want to put pressure on anything that might be just a little more fragile than she thinks.

They have time, anyway. For once, they have the time to figure these things out, and Sharon is so fucking grateful for that.

“It was - stressful,” Natasha says. Steve and Sam will probably guess that her words are an understatement. “But we got through it.”

She glances at Sharon, giving her a slightly deeper smile, and Sharon reaches out and squeezes her hand.

“We got through it,” Sharon repeats, returning the smile. 

“Good,” Steve says, and she knows that he's honestly happy for them. It had been Steve she'd been most wary of, actually, when it came to the whole polyamory thing. She's never sure whether she should judge him by modern standards or older ones, or some kind of combination of the two, and she's more than aware that some of the ways people live now would have been more than frowned upon when he'd been growing up.

Of course, the simple fact that Steve was in a relationship with Sam meant that he was already defying at least two major rules of his old life; no reason why he shouldn't be okay with shaking up the one about monogamy as well.

Someday she really wants to ask Steve if he'd known of any trans people, growing up, but she thinks that's a conversation she should save for a day when she's feeling very emotionally stable. She knows that his stories, if he has any, won't all have happy endings.

Still, despite Sam being part of the – complicated - equation, she hadn't been quite sure how well Steve would take her casual mentions of Natasha, and she'd prepared herself for at least a few moments of awkwardness that had never ended up arriving.

He's more than proved that her worries were unfounded by now, of course, but occasionally she still feels a little moment of disconnect – the man she's currently in a selectively-open relationship is _Steve Rogers._

Sharon realises that the conversation has moved on without her. She drags herself out of her thoughts – it's easy when her hand is still resting on Natasha's, giving her an anchor – and tunes back in.

“He's doing well, as far as I know,” Steve says to Natasha, and Sharon doesn't need to ask who the _he_ is. There's only one person in the world that can cause quite that expression on Steve's face, that not-quite-heartbreaking mix of guilt and doubt and nostalgia and – growing day by day, thankfully – hope.

“Is he going to stay in Wakanda now he's out of cryo?” Sharon asks, suddenly curious about how Bucky would fit into this new dynamic they have. She hopes that he won't feel excluded; she knows that feeling all too well, and she wouldn't wish it on him even for a moment. He's been through enough.

She's conscious that in some ways _she's_ the odd one out, of the five of them, but she isn't going to let that bother her too much. Besides, she has a feeling that every single one of them could make a case for being the outsider in their own way. Natasha had told her that Sam had once called the Avengers the Isle of Misfit Toys, and Sharon would bet that the jokey little statement had hit home for more than a few of them.

Steve nods. “At least for now. He's getting close to T’Challa,” he says, and if his voice holds just a little quiet melancholy at the thought that it’s someone other than him helping Bucky right now, well, it’s not like any of them are going to call attention to it. “Which is a bit odd considering how they met,” he continues in a lighter tone.

Sam laughs at that. “Babe, if Bucky’s criteria for friendship only included people he never tried to kill - or vice versa, more to the point - he’d be a pretty lonely guy.”

“I babysit for Clint and Laura, and I met Clint when I stabbed him with his own arrow,” Natasha offers, in a way more matter-of-fact voice than Sharon thinks that statement should warrant. 

Now that she thinks about it, Sharon doesn’t think she’s ever actually heard the full story of that first meeting. “How did you get the arrow in the first place?” she asks, wondering as soon as she says it if it’s a question she really does want answered.

“He fired quite a slow one,” Natasha says. “I think he was trying to make it a warning shot. So I grabbed it as it went past, jumped over to his rooftop and stabbed him. Just a little bit,” she adds, glancing round at everyone as though trying to reassure them. “He was fine after a few days.”

The entire table is silent for a few seconds. Then - 

“You grabbed the arrow _out of the air?_ ” Sam asks, just as Steve mutters something along the lines of _I changed my mind, I never want to know what happened in Budapest.  
_

“It was a slow-moving arrow,” Natasha repeats, as though that will somehow make her story seem less incredible.

“I love you,” Sharon says, leaning over and kissing Natasha on the cheek. They usually don’t show their affection for each other in front of people, but Steve and Sam don’t count.

Natasha glances sideways at her and squeezes her hand, which Sharon knows is her own kind of silent reply.

“That's adorable,” Sam says, sounding impatient. “Now can we back-track to the part where you _caught a fucking arrow?”_

The rest of the night goes well, with no more revelations and only a few terrible jokes – mostly from Steve and Natasha, actually; Sharon and Sam find their own kind of amusement in exaggerating their long-suffering expressions every time their partners make a new disastrous pun.

Sam's house – Sam and Steve's, really; Sharon doesn't even know if Steve's still renting the apartment he had in New York for a few months – isn't very far away from Sharon's place. So she and Natasha walk back together, mostly in the comfortable kind of silence that comes from knowing that the person you're with doesn't have any expectations of you right now, that you don't have to fill the spaces in the air around you with words.

Sharon's wanted that kind of comfort with someone for what feels like almost her whole life, and now that she has it someone would have a hell of a fight on their hands if they tried to take it away from her.

“Are you glad it happened?” Natasha asks, and Sharon doesn't feel the need to question what exactly the _it_ is.

“I don't know,” she says slowly. “It was hell at the time. I – it took me a few weeks before I was comfortable with my body again.” Natasha gives her a sharp glance; Sharon had deliberately never mentioned that, or at least only talked about it in the most roundabout ways. “And I know it was bad for you as well,” she continues, not giving Natasha time to jump in with a reprimand. “But – we learned a lot about each other. And I don't just mean the obvious things.”

“Like the surprise dick,” Natasha says, and Sharon chokes down a laugh at the memory of Sam's face.

“Like that,” she agrees. “And, you know, I think we would have got here eventually without it. But I don't know how long it would have taken. So I can't really see it as all bad.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sharon sees Natasha nod. “Yeah,” she says, soft but not hesitant. “This just proves that the saying about it being the journey that matters more than the end is bullshit, you know.”

Sharon knocks her shoulder into Natasha's, making her lose her step for a moment. Not her balance, though; that would take a lot more than one person's bodyweight. “You're ridiculous,” she says, knowing that her tone is nothing but fond, and not caring in the slightest. “And you're still wrong.”

Natasha glances over, meeting Sharon's eyes for just a second. “Oh?”

“We're not at the end of our story yet,” Sharon says, linking their hands together as they make the last turn towards home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed. I love these weeks, they give me great prompts and also deadlines (which I usually fail at, but still). I do have WIPs for the other 5 days of NatSharon week, but as a couple of them are literally a sentence long it might be a while before they appear.
> 
> Small note: Sharon is really unusual in being comfortable with talking about her birthname. It's perfectly normal if you're trans and like Sharon in that obviously, but it IS rare, so cis people: definitely stick to the rule of never ever ever asking trans people about things like that.
> 
> Also! I keep forgetting to say this but I'm doing a femslash November thing where I only write f/f ships. If you want to prompt me (mostly MCU but you can suggest others), feel free to leave a comment or message/ask on Tumblr, where I am sororising there as well. (I don't do sex scenes, though, but any other prompts are welcome.)
> 
> My other NatSharon fic is a canon-compliant origins story for them, if you're interested: [Light of the Grave.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8517730)
> 
> Feedback and concrit always welcomed.


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